Everything Leads to You

So I keep trying.

“Even if we leave Clyde and the movies out of it,” I say. “There’s still this thing that happens after you break up with someone. It barely takes any time to work. All you have to do is continue with your life, and then when you find yourself in a room with her again it’s as if you’re a different person. Maybe your posture is a little more confident. Maybe your laughter is louder. You’re wearing perfume she’s never smelled before and you have a new way of pinning back your hair. You don’t even have to say anything because your presence alone is enough to say Look at who I am without you.”

She smiles.

“That scenario sounds a lot more realistic,” she says.

We leave a pile of cherry pits on the grass, hop the fence again, get back into my car. The space between us feels electric, each breath is something we’re sharing. Once we’re on the road, ahead of us is only the dark hills and the sky, and we drive in silence and I don’t even turn on the music until we’re back in Los Angeles, hundreds of taillights stretching endlessly before us, the clutter of roads and freeways that could take us anywhere.





Chapter Twelve



I guess the realization that Ginger was right about my sofa has shaken my confidence, because this morning I find myself in Theo’s backyard having requested a meeting to go over my progress. Recognizing Ginger’s concept made my vision for this film clearer. I don’t want stylized, I want naturalistic. Instead of drawing the audience’s attention to a few meaningful objects, I want everything to be meaningful.

“I want the places to really look lived in,” I say to Theo now.

“Yes.”

“I want, like, dishes in the sink and a sweater draped over a chair.”

“Love it.”

“And I’m trying to think of how to make it cohesive. Juniper’s apartment will look a lot different from George’s house but I need to make them feel like they are from the same world. Like, emotionally.”

Theo nods and I notice some suppressed amusement and realize that I’m seeming young again. Of course the different sets should be cohesive in some way. That’s probably something people learn in their first production design class, but I haven’t taken any classes and even though it’s probably something I knew on some instinctual level, I didn’t totally understand it until Morgan and I watched the dailies.

So I stop talking about things I should already know and instead show Theo what I’ve planned so far. I’ve refined some of the vignettes and now that we’re sure we’re using Toby’s place for Juniper’s apartment, I’ve been able to figure out what should go where to make the most impact. And I stop feeling young and start feeling brilliant again because everything I show him gets him more and more excited. The shade of blue I chose for the curtains makes him clasp his hand over his heart.

“Isn’t it amazing,” he says, “what a certain shade of blue can do? How it can make a person feel?”

“And I also found these gorgeous botanical prints.”

I’ve been saving this for the meeting’s finale because I am certain he will love them. But even before he looks at my laptop screen where I’ve pulled up a photograph, his tone changes.

“Mmmm.” He squints and shakes his head.

“What?”

“Not botanicals.”

I push the screen closer to him. He must just have a different idea of what botanical prints would look like.

But he looks at the image and says, “These are lovely. Perfectly lovely. But they aren’t going to work.”

I stare at him. I don’t understand. They are so perfect for her. They cost so much money.

“Why not?”

“Juniper loves plants, yes. But you’ve covered that with the actual plants in her apartment. She’s more than just a botany student. We need to see a different side of her.”

“Okay,” I say. “So what do you have in mind?”

He smiles and points at me.

“That’s your job. I don’t know what should go on her walls, but I do know it isn’t botanicals. Now, I know you were planning to scout Juniper exteriors today but I was in and out of sleep all night with nightmares that we didn’t find a store. We were all gathered and ready with the costumes and equipment and then we realized we had nowhere to go.”

“So grocery stores today,” I say, trying to recover from the shock of the botanical rejection. “I’m on it.”

~

Theo is right. So clearly, painfully right.

I drive away feeling, once again, like such an amateur. Botanicals are the obvious choice, the first impulse meant to be replaced by a better one. I have to tell a better story with Juniper’s set, but I don’t yet know what that story should be.